


there is no frontier

by zauberer_sirin



Category: The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-23
Updated: 2012-10-23
Packaged: 2018-03-18 01:09:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3550478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zauberer_sirin/pseuds/zauberer_sirin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(post 4x02)</p>
            </blockquote>





	there is no frontier

 

 

 

Elena writes long letters to Bonnie and short emails to Caroline. She calls Jeremy, trying to make sure he doesn't burn the house down. She still feels like he is twelve or something, some great catastrophe waiting to happen every time she leaves the house. Many catastrophes have happened and Jeremy is still here, Elena reminds herself.

They all ask if she is having fun.

They all mean _are you all right?_

 

 

 

 

It's unsettling how easy it is; this prolonged vacation.

If she is no longer alive the rules of life need not apply to her. _For a while_ at least. She doesn't know whose idea it was – Stefan's, probably, it's the kind of thing he would come up with. _A respite_ he calls it, and starts buying travel guides and making lists. She doesn't know whose idea it was, Damon coming with them. Damon's, probably.

 

 

 

 

She has always wanted to see the world. Everybody does, right? It's not anything particular to her.

`Close your eyes and pick a place,´ Stefan whispers, kissing her throat.

`No. I want to do this with my eyes open.´

 

 

 

 

At first she thought it would be too much. The new heightened sensibility, and all these unfamiliar views. Her hometown was barely tolerable, and she had known its sounds and smells all her life. At first she thinks it might overwhelm her, when the plane arrives, a whole new _continent_. Even the word feels too big inside her head – thoughts and not just senses and impressions are amplified now. She can feel everything; the dirt of it, the difference in the light, the strange voices speaking stranger languages. The colors. The trains move and each country, each town, each blade of grass is a new color, distinctive, unimaginable. At first she thought she might be in danger of going crazy. She doesn't. It's okay. The overload settles in and becomes part of her. She lets it, like you would let yourself be carried by the undertow, instead of fighting it. She is resting her head on Stefan's arm while his fingers draw lazy figures on the train window, using the condensation as a blank canvas. _You are doing great_ he leans and tells her quietly. The compartment feels oddly empty without Damon's voice.

When Damon comes back he carries tiny bottles of scotch he offers to them.

`Did you steal those?´ Elena asks, suddenly, irrationally alarmed.

Damon snorts.

`Why would I steal them? I have money. What is this, a Fellini movie? I'm not that bohemian.´

Stefan frowns and Elena can tell Fellini's movies don't work like that. Damon raises an eyebrow at her when she starts laughing. Fair enough, she is laughing _at him_ , after all.

 

 

 

 

Stefan still insists on animal blood.

Damon, being Damon, still insists that's no way to live. Damon teaches her the theory of how to pick up passerbys, to use dark corners and that hour of the night when everything is blurry and the prey cannot be sure if it is all a dream, even as it happens, even before the compulsion. He tells her the story of how he learned to survived, refined his technique. These are Damon's methods, but Elena is not sure they can be hers. But she has time to figure that out, too. This what she is here for, anyway. A respite. She listens to Stefan. She listens to Damon. For the first time she can have a moment before she has to make that decision. Outside the war _there is time_. They play the part of tourists so well they become tourists.

Elena tries.

Elena doesn't kill anybody – she's discovered a knack for control. So much of her life these past few years has been out of her control that she somehow relishes the idea of keeping her hunger at bay, of taming her own insticts. It's like a trick.

If Damon murders someone when he is not with them (he certainly wouldn't try to in front of her and Stefan) Elena doesn't want to know. She has decided to stop thinking about it for a while. Rules don't apply here – as Damon said (with a glint in his eyes, under tragically cheap sunglasses) _this is Europe, baby_.

 

 

 

 

There are museums and galleries and Damon has a certain fondness for churches and cathedrals. Stefan likes small countryside villages with quaint names where people ride bicycles. Elena wants the oldest capitals. Stefan likes woods and forests. Damon compels his way into five-star hotels.

Elena takes long walks.

 

 

 

 

`He is brooding,´ Stefan says, as if Damon wasn't in the room (his room, or Elena and Stefan's room, she forgets which one, she forgets if that really matters), and like it's the most hilarious thing he's seen.

He might be right, though; Damon is quieter these days. Elena, too, but she has good reason. She is still taking it all in, pausing to stare. Something about Damon's silence offends her.

`Does Europe make you broody, big brother?´ Stefan teases, fierce and careful fingers running through Damon's hair.

Damon tries to push him away, he only comes up with an un-ingenious _Shut up_.

`Hey, that's no good,´ Elena protests. `This is _my trip_. Only I am allowed to be melancholy.´

 

 

 

 

She reads a lot. She has all the time in the world now.

Elena reads a lot of Henry James these days. She is the one who suggests Italy.

 

 

 

 

She and Stefan make love; loudly, languorously, the air sick and sweet like the height of summer and a fever, where every moment is bliss and every moment hurts.

She gets drunk with Damon sometimes.

They dance, the three of them, in an abandoned warehouse somewhere in the south of France, past unnamed little towns forgotten by newer roads. Elena watches Stefan dance with his brother, her knees scrapping against the concrete she sits down on the floor, as it starts to rain. There are holes in the copper roof and there's rain in Damon's hair as he rests his head on Stefan's shoulder. Elena closes her eyes, everything smells of moss, and for a moment she thinks this feels more alive than being alive.

 

 

 

 

 _This is not a heartbeat_ she reminds herself, when she is resting between their arms.

 

 

 

 

`We are drinking a lot these days,´ she tells Stefan. She doesn't mean the blood.

He shrugs. `Alcohol has not the same effect on vampires.´

`I know that, Stefan. It's just that... it seems like it's all we do these days.´

They are not tourists anymore. They are vagrants.

 

 

 

 

Then Europe is not enough.

When Europe is not enough they go east. The languages fly by faster than the names of cities. Both unfamiliar, and bittersweet, in Elena's mouth. Like the first taste of a strange dish, before you have time to decide whether you like it or not. The sky changes. She didn't know that could happen. She _knew_ it, of course, in her brain, but she didn't know it. How can the sky change this much?

 

 

 

 

`Do you think there are other vampires in this country?´ she asks. Every time. Every country.

`Why? You wanna leave them your calling call? Here's your little cousin Elena, so pleased to meet you.´

Damon doesn't harbor any warm feelings of kinship, he's just not wired like that. Elena knows why. It was always him and Stefan. It was not a matter of dead and undead, that's why he always scorns bloodlines and how other would romanticize them. It was always him and Stefan.

But it's not like that for Elena. Stefan looks at her now, with curiosity; she knows he gets it. She is not quite human anymore. She wants to know what else is out there for her. What else she could be, without her friends, her home, her landscape. What else she could be even if Stefan and Damon weren't around.

She wonders if here –whenever _here_ happens to be this time– people go through the same trials. Other wars, other protagonists, the same suffering. If somewhere out there there's a girl like Elena used to be, innocent, unaware, a weapon waiting to be brandished by forces unnatural. Elena thinks there must be such girl. The same story, repeating itself until perfected.

She looks down at her hand, the ring on it.

`We are lucky to have these rings. Be able to see all this, the world. Most vampires couldn't.´

`We are not most vampires.´

It's the kind of thing she would expect Damon to say, with derision, but he doesn't. It's Stefan who says it, his voice like an anchor, not with pride, but with a sense of responsibility. A heavy voice.

 

 

 

 

There are days when she feels nostalgic, of course. But she is not herself, not yet. She can't help but feeling there's another Elena –the real Elena– staying behind in Mystic Falls, holding the fort, and she would welcome Elena when she comes back home. She is still grieving.

 

 

 

 

She and Damon wind up in a deserted beach somehow, while Stefan tries to find a place to stay. Stefan is good with that. The details, the day-to-day. Damon would miss trains and not care, he would spend days in night clubs, he would cross frontiers without noticing, he would stop talking to them for hours. He has become mopey, unmanageable, sad. In his own way –Elena guesses– he is glad Stefan is here.

She watches him eye the wet sand suspiciously before dropping his jacket on it to sit down.

Elena sits by his side. She doesn't mind getting sand between her clothes, in her hair. She takes off her shoes and buries her toes in the sand. It's cold. It's not exactly happiness and Elena doesn't know if it's better than what they had back at home – _home_ – but it's different. It's different enough.

Enough for now.

They stare out at the sea – dark and humble under dirty sunlight, worlds away from the postcard-picture beauty the brochure has promised them. Then again, it's not tourist season. That's all right: they've ben doing this thing in their own terms.

`At some time we'll have to stop,´ Elena says, heavily, because saying it out loud makes it so.

Damon is squinting, the sharp, cold five-o'clock light against his face.

`Eventually we have to go back home,´ she repeats.

`Do we?´

`Yes. But... it doesn't have to be just yet. Does it?´

Elena knows he is staring at her but she doesn't turn her head. She knows he is waiting for her to look at him but she doesn't. She hears him give up.

`No. It doesn't have to be just yet,´ he tells her.

 

 

 

 

And then Stefan comes back with accommodation plans. And new clothes. And a bottle of wine. With his trousers rolled up, he is walking barefoot towards them. This makes her smile.

Then the sky changes; it looks like it might rain. Elena hopes it does.


End file.
